This time last year I was getting ready to fly to San Francisco to attend the inaugural GAADY Awards ceremony.
The GAADY Awards were set up to recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of individuals and organisations in the field of accessibility.
The second annual GAADY Awards ceremony takes place this November. And although I won’t be there in person this year I still want to celebrate this year’s winners and highlight the amazing work of the GAAD Foundation.
If you don’t know them, the GAAD Foundation has a mission to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement. The Foundation also organises Global Accessibility Awareness Day which takes place annually in May.
I was honoured that our work on the W3C website redesign was recognised by the GAAD Foundation, and that I had the opportunity to attend the award ceremony and meet the GAAD team.
The two other 2023 winners were the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker and Unilever & Zappar’s inclusive QR codes.
Congratulations to the 2024 GAADY Awards winners
GoodMaps Indoor Navigation
GoodMaps is revolutionizing indoor navigation by making complex spaces accessible for everyone. Their innovative technology helps people with disabilities, language barriers, or simply a need for guidance navigate confidently and independently.
Open ACR By CivicActions
CivicActions is streamlining government procurement by making accessibility compliance easier and more efficient. Their innovative OpenACR platform simplifies the process of creating, sharing, and maintaining accurate accessibility data, empowering vendors and procurement officers alike.
Washington State Parks Website By Anthro-Tech
Anthro-Tech breaks down barriers to the outdoors! Their innovative redesign of the Washington State Parks website makes it accessible and inclusive for everyone, ensuring all visitors can easily plan their adventures and experience the beauty of nature.
Accessibility all year round
The GAAD Foundation wants people to be talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion. We agree! Since winning the award last year:
- Our Front-End Lead Developer and accessibility advocate, Nicola, published a free guide to writing accessible content
- Our whole team has embarked upon the Digital Accessibility Foundations course from W3C – including the marketing team and Project Managers
- Simon gave a talk on website accessibility to local businesses at Cambridge Wide Open Day
- We’ve written blog posts on designing for colour blindness, using alt text in political messaging, web page complexity and accessibility, and using AI to build a better future for people with sight loss
- We’ve worked with some brilliant charity and not-for-profit clients including Kinship, Autism Research Centre, and RNIB to build accessible websites. We continue to work with W3C as their digital partner.
If you have a project and you want help with putting accessibility at its heart, then please get in touch. Maybe in 2025, we can win a GAADY Award together.